Oh come on, BoJo is just his bumpiece.

Part of me wants Dum Cum to stay in all honesty as he is doing a stirling job this week.

Longer term the little s*** is dangerous and needs to go imo.

Rhetorical however, he won’t resign. Mind you, if a post came up in Brazil to discredit the importance of the Amazon?…

What do you think?

I think there’s always been a gentleman’s club of men in grey suits who’ve been relatively benevolent in their machinations (as long as they made money). Cummings is a dangerous new kid on the block who wants the power without having any checks in place. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t lorries of cash heading to his bank accounts. At least Blair’s spin doctors didn’t hide away.

Cummings is a dangerous new kid on the block who wants the power without having any checks in place.

It’s not even that he wants power for power’s sake, or wealth. He just wants to win whatever political game he happens to be playing by whatever means, however unconventional. It’s an intellectual exercise for him.

https://www.sott.net/article/417953-Johnson-allys-firm-discreetly-runs-a-Facebook-propaganda-network-scam-of-professionalized-disinformation

Yes on second thoughts he wants to prove how brilliant he is. No conscience just look at me. I can believe he doesn’t even believe in Brexit.

I can believe he doesn’t even believe in Brexit.

He is interested in the wider goal of breaking down regulated markets and slimming down government and Whitehall.

In some regards you have to admire the lack of respect he shows to pretty much everyone, even those supposedly on ‘his side’. His assessments of the ERG and IDS were on the money, and it must be the case that he regards Boris as another ‘useful idiot’ whose superficial charm and electoral ‘likeability’ could help him advance his cause.

Sociopath.

No, I’m a big fan. He’s (unintentionally I presume!) doing a cracking job of destroying the Tory party for good and bringing about a counterbalance move to a much more representative democracy to stop the likes of him ever being in the driving seat again ie proportional representation. Roll on

Should Dominic Cummings resign?

No. 😀

I guess it depends how you feel about the UK taking back sovereignty from unelected officials…..

Sociopath.

Psychopath, according to call-me-Dave, from back when Dom was an advisor to Gove.

Quite a statment from a guy who thought nothing using an entire country as a pawn in a willy waggling contest with his own party. Credit where it’s due though, he quit.

The problem is, given his history, he’ll just pop up somewhere else where he might be able to do more damage. When he was doing this for Gove, his ability to actually affect things was limited. Now he’s with the PM, less so.

Unless by resign, you mean extraordinarly rendition to Nuku Hiva.

Read his blog

https://dominiccummings.com/

The wife tells me that on occasion watching someone who is not as clever as they think they are fall on their arse can be very rewarding.

So, no.

No. His advice to the PM should bite hard if the blonde buffoon carries out his threat to ignore the SO24 legislation. Jointly liable and due jail time and a huge civil liability to all those that lose money over no deal.

There’s not a chance in hell that BoJo won’t seek an extension, all this posturing for his public.

If half the stories about Cummings and the way he acts around, well
Women to be frank (doesn’t matter who they work for, what they’re doing or who they’re with at the time) he can’t he’ll be get into ‘heated debates’ with them when he drinks, which if often.

Nah, just get Malcolm Tucker to kick his head in.

Stainypants – I followed your suggestion from 7 hrs ago to read his blog; I did and have only just finished it.
Would be helpful if you or he could translate and condense his verbosity.
Same as Johnson in that it’s an attempt to use verbosity, extensive quotes from generally unknown sources, circuitous references to convince others that they understand what they are doing and have a developed strategy.
Bollocks.
I have referred previously to Cummings being nothing more than a fly which will settle on any pile of shit and feed until it’s had enough; then it trucks off onto another pile of shit.

@frankconway

I only read the first page on my phone and that was all I could take.

Symbolic thinking and argument mate by reference to others.

Perhaps he is a genius? Or attempting to be thought of as one by standing on the shoulders of others?

Just the sort of reference Cummings would make actually.

Basically you are spot on and kudos for managing to get through all that dross Frank!

I skimmed the blog. To quote Cummings himself, “Not one in a thousand will read a 10,000 word blog on the intersection of management and technology and the few who do will dismiss it as the babbling of a deluded fool”.
I’m sure there’s a lot of interesting ideas in there, but it reminded me of the E.F Schumacher quote “Any fool can make things complicated, it requires a genius to make things simple”

There was a guy on R4 on Thurs who was an academic who was a specialist in the various theories adopted by DomCum and who followed/ read his blog. He said the problem he was using a too simplistic approach to a very complex situation – eg trying to create a head on collision and assuming the EU will “yield” to the threat on no deal was simply saying “if you don’t do what I want I’ll shoot myself”

Would be helpful if you or he could translate and condense his verbosity.

For this latest blog.
Probably the most interesting bit of it is right at the end. Maybe he did it just to see if anyone managed to get through it?

“not least because if it happens the Conservative Party may well not exist in any meaningful sense (whether there is or isn’t another referendum).”

Now, is that someone you would want as chief of staff for the tory party? Someone who isnt overly fussed about its survival.

Its somewhat ironic that his current blog is largely about making information more visual and therefore, in his mind, more accessible.

TL:DR
Its badly structured and highly rambling grabbing ideas from here and there.
He is saying we should adopt this Bret Victors ideas about visualising information but doesnt actually do so himself. Admittedly he says the tools doesnt exist (which in itself is a red flag) but couldnt he at least try presenting his data in this way. Just do a sample for a few paragraphs to show us how good it is?
Really not convinced by some of his examples. He shows pictures of NASA, large Hadron collider and so on control rooms and compares them to the political meeting rooms. Whilst he has a point about the lack of screens in some cases he doesnt seem to notice they serve different jobs.
Those control rooms are top down affairs where people monitor and feedback to the boss. Whereas a ministerial discussion should be just that. Lots of discussion.
His knowledge of business seems mixed. He talks about how companies have access to collaboration tools such as google docs vs it being “against the rules” for the UK government. ermmm yes and for many companies as well if they are bothered about security.
Overall he comes across as one of those people with little direct knowledge of technology who absolutely festishes the subject and thinks it will solve all ills.

Just to add to Dissonance’s TL;DR overview (I’m about 25% of the way through his blog)

I’m just wondering when I read this , if this is all such a good idea (and by the way, there is a lot that he makes passing comment on that are good management process in certain situations) , why on earth hasn’t he actually done any of this (ie applied, tested and demonstrated these processes and methodologies) himself?

Tends to suggest that he’s saying, “hey, I read a book!” and thinking that’s good enough. Passing the theory test then not bothering to sit the practical

He makes comments also about politicians hiding behind bombast…

hmmm…

anyway, more to trawl through (its like reading one of my students research dissertations while looking for their own personal reasoning and conclusions)

trying to create a head on collision and assuming the EU will “yield” to the threat on no deal was simply saying “if you don’t do what I want I’ll shoot myself”

It’s funny, that’s the metaphor that’s popped into my head a number of times in recent years, more and more since BoJo got in;

The UK as a man in a room with several other people (representing the other 27). He’s not the most popular person in the group, but not completely disliked. However he’s had some sort of break from reality and is holding a gun to his own head, shouting demands and threatening to blow his own head off.

I think we’re at the point in that metaphor now though where although the other people in the room have been wincing at the thought of witnessing a suicide and having to get some dry cleaning done after, many are tiring of the whole thing. Whilst they’re not yet goading him, they are perhaps bracing themselves to see something unpleasant…

Anyway extending the metaphor further Cummings is a difficult part of that snapped man’s psyche. A little voice driven by a mixture of narcissism, angst and intellectual frustration that can produce convoluted, logical falsehoods, and emotive arguments to convince those other parts of his mind to keep that gun to his temple and blabbing out demands…

I’m not reading his blog, I don’t want his doublespeak anywhere near my own, already quite malleable mind.

His knowledge of business seems mixed. He talks about how companies have access to collaboration tools such as google docs vs it being “against the rules” for the UK government.

Odd, that, given that it’s exactly what GDS (Government Digital Services) use. Or at least, used, my insider info is a couple of years old now.

The UK as a man in a room with several other people (representing the other 27). He’s not the most popular person in the group, but not completely disliked. However he’s had some sort of break from reality and is holding a gun to his own head, shouting demands and threatening to blow his own head off.

The Blazing Saddles approach assumes that the EU leaders are equally stupid as the townsfolk of Rock Ridge. Which they are not.

Link which has BAD WORDS in it.

https://tinyurl.com/y452gd6n

Should Dominic Cummings resign?

No, he should be ritually tortured then dragged through the streets before being strung up outside the Houses of Parliament next to the similarly treated figures of Farage and Johnson. I’d potentially add a few more in there like Gove, Javid and JRM.

I’m not a violent person normally but the damage that a tiny number of people have brought to the entire UK needs some sort of retribution other than being allowed to resign and slope off to a comfortable life somewhere else (like Cameron has managed).

Well, whatever he does, I guess when he’s finished over here, he can always slide off back to Russia.  Hasn’t he previously spent about 3 years over there ‘setting up an airline business’ (one where pilots outnumbered passengers according to R4).

Cummings is a dangerous new kid on the block who wants the power without having any checks in place

Not that new. He was, at the age of 30, Ian Duncan Smith’s ‘Director of Strategy’ back in 2002, which was 17 years ago.

There’s an interesting piece somewhere on the flaw in his game theory approach to negotiating with the EU which compares his / BoJo’s approach to playing chicken in cars hurtling towards each other then, the Uk this is, throwing the steering wheel out of the driver’s window, so you can’t change course, so to survive, the other driver has to give way.

Which is all fine if you’re both driving Zafiras, but doesn’t work quite so well if the oncoming car is actually a lorry, so while you may damage it slightly, you’re going to come off a hell of a lot worse. That’s kind of where we are with the EU. If we leave without a deal we do cause them damage, but the damage to the UK is going to be significantly more serious.

Suddenly throwing the steering wheel away doesn’t seem quite so clever.

Should he resign? No, he should be thrown out and then suffer some sort of punishment for being in contempt of Parliament and prosecuted for breaking election rules during the referendum campaign see:

See this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/smash-and-grab-dominic-cummings-democracy

I’ve read the whole of that blog post. Whilst it certainly doesn’t follow one of Orwell’s primary rules for writing (don’t use a long word when a short word will do), it’s not completely without merit.

The government and the civil service is incredibly bureaucratic in a very Victorian way. This is why they seem to find it virtually impossible to deliver any major project on time and even vaguely within budget. I worked within what was a quasi-public sector industry (higher education) for many years, after previously working for dotcoms. I could scarcely believe how antiquated and full of petty bureaucrats it was. Government and the civil service are very similar from what I’ve heard from friends who’ve worked in both areas (one being, unfortunately an advisor to Boris years ago).

I should add here that I oppose Brexit and can see truth in the assertion of Cumming’s being a bureaucrat.

I would, however, vote for a party that made evidence-based policy decisions, rather than, as is currently the case across the main parties, making them based on political dogma.

JP

I’d be interested to know what “various projects” he was engaged with in Russia between ’94 and ’97.
As a teacher when Gove was in charge of education, and Cummings was his chief advisor, it was clear that more frequent testing/results/data etc were to try to find poor teaching. This ‘might’ have been valid if support and training was guaranteed, but Heads tended to ship apparently poor staff out, with a half decent reference. Gove’s reign was very divisive. Perhaps a pattern with Cummings.

Cummings points on bureaucracy are certainly reasonable

The irony being that the European parliament has far less civil servants than our own to administer far more people! (I know that the 2 don’t do the same jobs)

A friend worked as a troubleshooter for the dwp 8 odd years ago, to look at why UC was being delayed, he found incompetence at every level, civil servants having rings run round then by big IT companies, everyone knew it was going to be massively late & overbudget, this was fed back up to the ministers (IDS) who just ignored it and insisted deadlines would be met….
(My mates company were paid an absolute fortune by the government for this advice which was simply ignored)

Cummings famously said he hated David Davis , “thick as mince, lazy as a road, vain as narcissus”
He now works for Johnson…. 🤔 maybe he’s deliberately blowing up the Tory party !

The government and the civil service is incredibly bureaucratic in a very Victorian way

As muddy@rseguy says its not that some of the ideas arent in themselves bad its more that all he is doing is listing what other people say without any mention of how to apply all these different ideas to government. Not all ideas fit all scenarios. In IT for example we regularly get hit by the trendy management practice of the week which works for some specific business sector and is now being recycled to use everywhere.

With the best example being his own essay when he is talking about how to replace reams of text.
As for government bureaucracy yes it definitely does exist and is an arse however how much of that is down to government and how much to being a large organisation is debatable. If you look at places like google you can see them changing over time to add more and more bureaucracy

I would, however, vote for a party that made evidence-based policy decisions

The problem there is setting up test cases. I studied a bit of psychology at degree level and about the only bit which I proper retain was one of the professors mentioning how many of the studies we were about to look at wouldnt pass an ethics board nowadays and that was mostly experimenting on psychology students not the segments of the population.
It works in some cases but setting up proper studies is fraught with ethical and other concerns and without that generally you can twist evidence as you like.

It’s funny, that’s the metaphor that’s popped into my head a number of times in recent years, more and more since BoJo got in;
The UK as a man in a room with several other people (representing the other 27). He’s not the most popular person in the group, but not completely disliked. However he’s had some sort of break from reality and is holding a gun to his own head, shouting demands and threatening to blow his own head off.

Yeah, I often think that Brexit, especially the hard Brexit being pushed, is like deciding you don’t like wearing glasses anymore and removing them by firing a shotgun into your face.

He now works for Johnson…. 🤔 maybe he’s deliberately blowing up the Tory party !

If you read the blog his disdain for many in the tory party and his utter lack of commitment to the party is obvious.
He wants to disrupt (being a cool type that will be the word of choice) UK politics and then have it remodelled in his own image.
So whilst I am not sure he is deliberately blowing it up as a primary goal I think he would consider it a bonus or at the minimum acceptable collateral damage.
All in all not really the person anyone sensible (tory or not) would want effectively in charge of the party.

Enjoyed reading a lot of stuff on his blog (thks for the link Stainypants) – agree that he has some of that arts graduate shock and awe when talking about science and mathematics, but he’s got first hand experience of the morass of the civil service, the total mediocrity of politicians serving up gimmick after gimmick such that strategy is now a word without meaning in Westminster, endemic failure to deliver big projects etc etc. Calling for a total rethink along scientific and technological lines, more scientist MPs, and genuinely believing that change is possible sounds like positive thinking.

Saying that, I’m not sure what game he is currently running – he’s clearly not someone who is going to be able to take anyone with him, ideologically speaking (reminded me a lot of Steve Bannon when he was appointed in the US – it was obvious that someone that polarising had about 6 months max in the role), so what is he hoping to achieve with Johnson?

No, he should be ritually tortured then dragged through the streets before being strung up outside the Houses of Parliament next to the similarly treated figures of Farage and Johnson.

The approach I saw used by insurgents in Iraq seemed quite brutal. Suspended from a lamp post by meat hooks pushed through behind the Achilles.

Suspended from a lamp post by meat hooks pushed through behind the Achilles.

That’s standard butchery practice, although while we remain in the EU the animal must be killed humanely first. There is also a handy double hook thing called a gambrel that does both legs in one

I would, however, vote for a party that made evidence-based policy decisions

The problem there is setting up test cases. I studied a bit of psychology at degree level and about the only bit which I proper retain was one of the professors mentioning how many of the studies we were about to look at wouldnt pass an ethics board nowadays and that was mostly experimenting on psychology students not the segments of the population.
It works in some cases but setting up proper studies is fraught with ethical and other concerns and without that generally you can twist evidence as you like.

You don’t have to set up studies to use evidence based policy making; you could just look at what works in other countries where there are enough similarities to your own to make the comparison valid.

So, for example, you might look at which countries have the best educational attainment at 18 and look at how the policies work to achieve that, rather than following some sort of weird right/left dogma about grammar schools (elitism) or comprehensive education (drag everyone down to a lower level).

JP

Made me laugh when I read a couple of days ago that he told advisers/ministers after yet another lost vote to be “cool like Fonzies.”

I didn’t laugh when I read he then said, “this is just the beginning.”

I can still see a majority Tory/Brexit Party government getting in later this year/next, then the s*** is really going to hit the fan.

So, for example, you might look at which countries have the best educational attainment at 18

And here is problem number one. Define “best educational attainment”. Is it just getting a subset of elite students as far as possible (even then define elite) or is it getting a better average level overall even at some expense to the outliers.
Is it about giving kids the best general skillset or saving business money in training them up.
Thats leaving aside that pretty much every country will have pros and cons and so you would want to select a mix of them all if you want to do the job properly.

So, for example, you might look at which countries have the best educational attainment at 18

And here is problem number one. Define “best educational attainment”. Is it just getting a subset of elite students as far as possible (even then define elite) or is it getting a better average level overall even at some expense to the outliers.
Is it about giving kids the best general skillset or saving business money in training them up.
Thats leaving aside that pretty much every country will have pros and cons and so you would want to select a mix of them all if you want to do the job properly.

You’re over-complicating things. There are already plenty of metrics for educational attainment out there – it’s really not that difficult to see where education systems are better than ours. I’m not saying this as a layman – I have a Masters in Education, a PGCE and worked in pretty much every part of the sector from primary to HE to private sector for many years.

JP